Certainty

Well, I've been known to go a little overboard when it comes to the lawn, and when I discovered that there is a selective herbicide for controlling tall fescue in Kentucky bluegrass, it was essentially love at first sight. This was after four hours of trying to pull it up by hand with a weeder (some might also call this going a little overboard) and my desperate resolve to try to pull it all up gradually over the course of the growing season. I couldn't believe my eyes to find that there are actually products that can be used for this very purpose! After doing some online searching, I found that Certainty Turf Herbicide seemed to be the most accessible to purchase and found some on ebay for cheaper than most online retail stores. It's not cheap at $100 for 1.25 oz bottle, however, in comparison to the hours of manual pulling that was my alternative, I consider it a steal and didn't think twice about it.

So here it is:

Certainty Turf Herbicide - 1.25 oz

The incredible (and embarrassing) thing is that this tiny bottle that is about the size of a prescription bottle has enough in it to treat our whole front and back yard about 25 times, and I will likely only be applying it twice to just part of the front yard (for now).

I am planning to make the first application tomorrow. I'll only be applying it to just the old grass as the grass I planted last year is still young and may not be able to withstand it and plus it doesn't have much tall fescue mixed in it.

I thought that I might be able to use this on the backyard eventually, however, it says in the instructions: "Avoid application of this product on stands with a high percentage of perennial ryegrass or fine fescue." Since I just seeded at about 80% fine fescue, this may not be an option for back there.

I was perplexed when the instructions said to add a "nonionic surfactant" to the mix of water and herbicide. I had no clue what this meant, so I asked a very qualified family member who explained that the surfactant helps the herbicide spread out on the plant instead of beading up. He said that dish soap can be used for this purpose; and also, that dish soap is a base so it will keep the pH up, which is another thing the instructions warned about. Good to know.

So, tomorrow I'll have to figure out how to evenly spray exactly 2 gallons of the mixture over about 1000 sq ft using a hand-held pump sprayer - should be interesting. And in about 2-3 weeks, results should be visible with yellowing/browning of the leaves. The Kentucky bluegrass may be stunted and show some yellowing as well, but it should recover in a few weeks. After 3-4 weeks (May 12 - May 19), it'll be time for the second application, assuming that the existing Kentucky bluegrass isn't too stressed by it.